Walter Besant
The inner house
"Welcome home, Captain Heron," said Christine. "We have followed your campaign day by day."
"We are home again," the soldier replied, gravely. "Unfortunately, we have left a good many of our regiment behind."
"Behind? You mean – they – are – dead." Christine shuddered. The others shuddered. Even Captain Heron himself for a moment turned pale. But he was again in the Past, and the honor of his regiment was in his hands.
"You have fought with other men," said Christine. "Let me look in your face. Yes – it is changed. You have the look of the fighting man in the old pictures. You look as if you mean to have something, whatever it is, whether other men want it or not. Oh, you have fought with men! It is wonderful! Perhaps you have even killed men. Were you dreadfully afraid?"
Captain Heron started and flushed.
"Afraid?" he asked. "Afraid?"
"Oh!" Christine clapped her hands. "I wanted to see that look. It is the look of a man in sudden wrath. Forgive me! It is terrible to see a man thus moved. No, Captain Heron, no! I understand. An officer in your regiment could be afraid of nothing."
She sat down, still looking at him.
"I have seen a soldier," she said. Then she sprang to her feet. "Now," she cried, "it is our turn. Come with me, you ladies; and you, gentlemen, go into that room. For one night we will put on the dresses you used to wear. Come!"
They obeyed. There was nothing that they would not have done, so completely had she bewitched them. How long since they had been addressed as ladies and gentlemen!
"Come," she said, in the room whither she led the women, "look about, and choose what you please. But we must make haste."
There was a great pile of dainty dresses laid out for them to choose – dresses in silk and all kinds of delicate stuffs, with embroidery, lace, ribbons, jewels, chains, rings, bracelets, gloves, fans, shoes – everything that the folly of the past time required to make rich women seem as if they were not the same as their poorer sisters.
They turned over the dresses, and cried out with admiration. Then they hastened to tear off their ugly gray frocks, and began to dress.
But the girl called Dorothy Oliphant sank into a chair. "Oh, he has forgotten me! he has forgotten me! Who am I that he should remember me after all these years?"
"Why," said Christine, "how should he remember? What matters that you have the same face? Think of your dull look and your heavy eyes; think of the dowdy dress and the ugly cap. Wait till you have put on a pretty frock and have dressed your hair; here is a chain of pearls which will look pretty in your hair; here is a sweet colored silk. I am sure it will fit you. Oh, it is a shame – it is a shame that we have to dress so! Never mind. Now I have found out the old dresses, we will have many evenings together. We will go back to the Past. He will remember you, Dorothy dear. Oh, how could you give them up? How could you give up your lovely dresses?"
"We were made to give them up because there were not enough beautiful dresses to go round. They said that no woman must be dressed better than another. So they invented – it was Dr. Grout, the Suffragan, who did it – the gray dress for the women and the blue flannel for the men. And I had almost forgotten that there were such things. Christine, my head is swimming. My heart is beating. I have not felt my heart beating for I know not how long. Oh, will Geoffrey remember me when I am dressed?"
"Quick! Of course he will. Let me dress you. Oh, I often come here in the daytime and dress up, and pretend that it is the Past again. You shall come with me. But I want to hear you talk as you used to talk, and to see you dance as you used to dance. Then I shall understand it all."
When they returned, the men were waiting for them. Their blue flannels were exchanged for black cloth clothes, which it had been the custom of those who called themselves gentlemen to wear in the evening. In ancient times this was their absurd custom, kept up in order to mark the difference between a gentleman and one of the lower class. If you had no dress-coat, you were not a gentleman. How could men ever tolerate, for a single day, the existence of such a social difference? As for me, in the part of London where I lived, called Whitechapel, there were no dress-coats. The change, however, seemed to have transformed them. Their faces had an eager look, as if they wanted something. Of course, in the old times everybody always wanted something. You can see it in the pictures – the faces are never at rest; in the portraits, the eyes are always seeking for something; nowhere is there visible the least sign of contentment. These unfortunate men had acquired, with their old clothes, something of the old restlessness.
Christine laughed aloud and clapped her hands.
The women did not laugh. They saluted the men, who bowed with a certain coldness. The manners of the Past were coming back to them swiftly, but the old ease was not recovered for the first quarter of an hour. Then Captain Heron, who had changed his uniform for civilian dress, suddenly flushed and stepped forward, whispering,
"Dorothy, you have forgotten me?"
Dorothy smiled softly, and gave him her hand with a quick sigh. No, she had not forgotten him.
"Dance!" said Christine. "I want to see you dance. I will play for you."
She played a piece of music called a Waltz. When this kind of music used to be played – I mean in the houses of (so-called) ladies, not those of the People – the young men and women caught each other round the waist and twirled round. They had many foolish customs, but none more foolish, I should suppose, than this. I have never seen the thing done, because all this foolishness was forgotten as soon as we settled down to the enjoyment of the Great Discovery. When, therefore, Christine began this music, they looked at each other for a few moments, and then, inspired by memory, they fell into each other's arms and began their dance.
She played for them for a quarter of an hour. While the rest danced, the young man Jack stood beside the piano, as if he was chained to the spot. She had bewitched them all, but none so much as this man. He therefore gazed upon the girl with an admiration which certainly belonged to the old time. Indeed, I have never been able to understand how the Past could be so suddenly assumed. To admire – actually to admire – a woman, knowing all the time – it is impossible to conceal the fact – that she is your inferior, that she is inferior in strength and intellect! Well, I have already called them unfortunate men; I can say no more. How can people admire things below themselves? When she had played for a quarter of an hour or so, this young man called upon her to stop. The dancers stopped too, panting, their eyes full of light, their cheeks flushed and their lips parted.
"Oh," Dorothy sighed, "I never thought to feel such happiness again. I could dance on forever."
"With me?" murmured Geoffrey. "I was praying that the last round might never stop. With me?"
"With you," she whispered.
"Come!" cried the young man Jack. "It is too bad. Christine must dance. Play for us, Cousin Mildred, and I will give her a lesson."
Mildred laughed. Then she started at the unwonted sound. The others laughed to hear it, and the walls of the Museum echoed with the laughter of girls. The old man sat up in his chair and looked around.
"I thought I was at Philippe's, in Paris," he said. "I thought we were having a supper after the theatre. There was Ninette, and there was Madeleine – and – and – "
He looked about him bewildered. Then he dropped his head and went to sleep again. When he was neither eating nor battling for his breath, he was always sleeping.
"I am your cousin, Jack," said Mildred; "but I had long forgotten it. And as for playing – but I will try. Perhaps the old touch will return."
It did. She played with far greater skill and power than the self-taught Christine, but not (as they have said since) with greater sweetness.
Then Jack took Christine and gave her a first lesson. It lasted nearly half an hour.
"Oh," cried the girl, when Lady Mildred stopped, "I feel as if I had been floating round in a dream. Was I a stupid pupil, Jack?"
"You were the aptest pupil that dancing-master ever had."
"I know now," she said, with panting breath and flushed cheeks, "what dancing means. It is wonderful that the feet should answer to the music. Surely you must have loved dancing?"
"We did," the girls replied; "we did. There was no greater pleasure in the world."
"Why did you give it up?"
They looked at each other.
"After the Great Discovery," said Dorothy Oliphant, "we were so happy to get rid of the terrors of old age, and the loss of our beauty, and everything, that at first we thought of nothing else. When we tried to dance again, something had gone out of it. The men were not the same. Perhaps we were not the same. Everything languished after that. There was no longer any enjoyment. We ceased to dance because we found no pleasure in dancing."
"But now you do?" said Christine.
"To-night we do, because you have filled our hearts with the old thoughts. To get out of the dull, dull round – why is it that we never felt it dull till to-night? Oh, so long as we can remember the old thoughts, let us continue to dance and to play and to sing. If the old thoughts cease to come back to us" – she looked at Geoffrey – "let us fall back into our dulness, like the men and women round us."
"It was to please me first," said Christine. "You were so very kind as to come here to please me, because I can have no recollection at all of the Past, and I was curious to understand what I read. Come again – to please yourselves. Oh, I have learned so much – so very much more than I ever expected! There are so many, many things that I did not dream of. But let us always dance," she said – "let us always dance – let me always feel every time you come as if there was nothing in the world but sweet music calling me, and I was spinning round and round, but always in some place far better and sweeter than this."
"Yes," Lady Mildred said, gravely. "Thus it was we used to feel."
"And I have seen you as you were – gentlemen and gentlewomen together. Oh, it is beautiful! Come every night. Let us never cease to change the dismal Present for the sunny Past. But there is one thing – one thing that I cannot understand."
"What is that?" asked Lady Mildred.
"In the old books there is always, as I said before, a young man in love with a girl. What is it – Love?" The girls sighed and cast down their eyes. "Was it possible for a man so to love a girl as to desire nothing in the world but to have her love, and even to throw away his life – actually his very life – his very life – for her sake?"
"Dorothy," said Geoffrey, taking both her hands, "was it possible? Oh, was it possible?"
Dorothy burst into tears.
"It was possible!" she cried; "but oh, it is not possible any longer."
"Let us pretend," said Geoffrey, "let us dream that it is possible."
"Even to throw away your life – to die – actually your life?" asked Christine. "To die? To exist no longer? To abandon life – for the sake of another person?"
A sudden change passed over all their faces. The light died out of their eyes; the smile died on their lips; the softness vanished from the ladies' faces; the men hung their heads. All their gallantry left them. And Geoffrey let Mildred's hands slip from his holding. The thought of Death brought them all back to the Present.
"No," said Lady Mildred, sadly, and with changed voice, "such things are no longer possible. Formerly, men despised death because it was certain to come, in a few years at best; and why not, therefore, to-morrow? But we cannot brave death any more. We live, each for himself. That is the only safety; there is only the law of self-preservation. All are alike; we cannot love each other any more, because we are all alike. No woman is better than another in any man's eyes, because we are all dressed the same, and we are all the same. What more do we want?" she said, harshly. "There is no change for us; we go from bed to work, from work to rest and food, and so to bed again. What more can we want? We are all equals; we are all the same; there are no more gentlewomen. Let us put on our gray frocks and our flat caps again, and hide our hair and go home to bed."
"Yes, yes," cried Christine, "but you will come again. You will come again, and we will make every night a Play and Pretence of the beautiful – the lovely Past. When we lay aside the gray frocks, and let down our hair, we shall go back to the old time – the dear old time."
The young man named Jack remained behind when the others were gone. "If it were possible," he said, "for a man to give up everything – even his life – for a woman, in the old times, when life was a rich and glorious possession – how much more ought he not to be willing to lay it down, now that it has been made a worthless weed?"
"I have never felt so happy" – the girl was thinking of something else. "I have never dreamed that I could feel so happy. Now I know what I have always longed for – to dance round and round forever, forgetting all but the joy of the music and the dance. But oh, Jack" – her face turned pale again – "how could they ever have been happy, even while they waltzed, knowing that every minute brought them nearer and nearer to the dreadful end?"
"I don't know. Christine, if I were you, I would never mention that ugly topic again, except when we are not dressed up and acting. How lovely they looked – all of them – but none of them to compare with the sweetest rose-bud of the garden?"
He took her hand and kissed it, and then left her alone with the old man in the great Museum.
CHAPTER IV
WHAT IS LOVE?
It would be idle to dwell upon the repetition of such scenes as those described in the last chapter. These unhappy persons continued to meet day after day in the Museum; after changing their lawful garments for the fantastic habits worn before the Great Discovery, they lost themselves nightly in the imagination of the Past. They presently found others among the People, who had also been gentlewomen and gentlemen in the old days, and brought them also into the company; so that there were now, every evening, some thirty gathered together. Nay, they even procured food and made suppers for themselves, contrary to the practice of common meals enjoined by the Holy College; they gloried in being a company apart from the rest; and because they remembered the Past, they had the audacity to give themselves, but only among themselves, airs of superiority. In the daytime they wore the common dress, and were like the rest of the People. The thing grew, however. Every evening they recalled more of the long-vanished customs and modes of thought – one remembering this and the other that little detail – until almost every particular of the ancient life had returned to them. Then a strange thing happened. For though the Present offered still – and this they never denied – its calm, unchanging face, with no disasters to trouble and no certain and miserable end to dread; with no anxieties, cares, and miseries; with no ambitions and no struggles; they fell to yearning after the old things; they grew to loathe the Present; they could hardly sit with patience in the Public Hall; they went to their day's work with ill-concealed disgust. Yet, so apathetic had the people grown that nothing of this was observed; so careless and so unsuspicious were we ourselves that though the singing and playing grew louder and continued longer every evening, none of us suspected anything. Singing, in my ears, was no more than an unmeaning noise; that the girl in the Museum should sing and play seemed foolish, but then children are foolish – they like to make a great noise.
One afternoon – it was some weeks since this dangerous fooling began – the cause of the whole, the girl Christine, was in the Museum alone. She had a book in her hand, and was reading in it. First she read a few lines, and then paused and meditated a while. Then she read again, and laughed gently to herself. And then she read, and changed color. And again she read, and knitted her brows as one who considers but cannot understand.
The place was quite deserted, save for her grandfather, who sat in his great chair, propped up with pillows and fast asleep. He had passed a bad night with his miserable asthma; in the morning, as often happens with this disease, he found himself able to breathe again, and was now therefore taking a good spell of sleep. His long white hair fell down upon his shoulders, his wrinkled old cheek showed a thousand crows' feet and lines innumerable; he looked a very, very old man. Yet he was no more than seventy-five or so, in the language of the Past. He belonged formerly to those who lived upon the labor of others, and devoured their substance. Now, but for his asthma, which even the College cannot cure, he should have been as perfectly happy as the rest of the People. The sunshine which warmed his old limbs fell full upon his chair; so that he seemed, of all the rare and curious objects in that collection, the rarest and most curious. The old armor on the wall, the trophies of arms, the glass vases containing all the things of the past, were not so rare and curious as this old man – the only old man left among us. I daily, for my own part, contemplated the old man with a singular satisfaction. He was, I thought, a standing lesson to the People, one daily set before their eyes. Here was the sole surviving specimen of what in the Past was the best that the men and women could expect – namely, to be spared until the age of seventy-five, and then to linger on afflicted with miserable diseases and, slowly or swiftly, to be tortured to death. Beholding that spectacle, I argued, all the people ought to rub their hands in complacency and gratitude. But our people had long ceased to reason or reflect. The lesson was consequently thrown away upon them. Nay, when this girl began her destructive career, those whom she dragged into her toils only considered this old man because he would still be talking, as all old men used to talk, about the days of his youth, for the purpose of increasing their knowledge of the Past, and filling their foolish souls with yearning after the bad old times.
While Christine read and pondered, the door of the Museum opened. The young man called Jack stood there gazing upon her. She had thrown off her cap, and her long brown curls lay over her shoulders. She had a red rose in the bosom of her gray dress, and she had tied a crimson scarf round her waist. Jack (suffer me to use the foolishness of their language – of course his name was John) – closed the door silently.
"Christine," he whispered.
She started, and let her book fall. Then she gave him her hand, which he raised to his lips. (Again I must ask leave to report a great deal of foolishness.)
"It is the sweet old fashion," he said. "It is my homage to my lady."
They were now so far gone in folly that she accepted this act as if it was one natural and becoming.
"I have been reading," she said, "a book full of extracts – all about love. I have never understood what love is. If I ask Dorothy, she looks at Geoffrey Heron and sighs. If I ask him, he tells me that he cannot be my servant to teach me, because he is already sworn to another. What does this mean? Have the old times come back again, so that men once more call themselves slaves of love? Yet what does it mean?"
"Tell me," said Jack, "what you have been reading."
"Listen, then. Oh, it is the strangest extravagance! What did men mean when they could gravely write down, and expect to be read, such things as —
"'I do love you more than words can wield the matter —
Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty;
Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare?'
'Dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty.' Did they really mean that?"
"They meant more; they meant dearer than life itself!" said Jack, slowly. "Only it was stupid always to say the same thing."
"Well, then, listen to this:
"'Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love
That inward beauty and invisible;
Or, were I deaf, thy outward parts would move
Each part in me that were but sensible.
Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,
Yet should I be in love, by touching thee.'
Now, Jack, what can that mean? Was anything more absurd?"
"Read another extract, Christine."
"Here is a passage more difficult than any other:
"'Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.'
Tell me, if you can, what this means. But perhaps you were never in love, Jack, in the old times."
"Romeo was in love before he met Juliet," said Jack. "I, too, have been reading the old books, you see, Child. I remember – but how can I tell you? I cannot speak like the poet. Yet I remember – I remember." He looked round the room. "It is only here," he murmured, "that one can clearly remember. Here are the very things which used to surround our daily life. And here are youth and age. They were always with us in the old time – youth and age. Youth with love before, and age with love behind. Always we knew that as that old man, so should we become. The chief joys of life belonged to youth; we knew very well that unless we snatched them then we should never have them. To age we gave respect, because age, we thought, had wisdom; but to us – to us – who were young, age cried unceasingly —
"'Gather ye rose-buds while ye may.'
If I could tell only you! Christine, come with me into the Picture Gallery. My words are weak, but the poets and the painters speak for us. Come! We shall find something there that will speak for me what I have not words to say for myself."
Nothing in the whole world – I have maintained this in the College over and over again – has done so much harm to Humanity as Art. In a world of common-sense which deals with nothing but fact and actuality, Art can have no place. Why imitate what we see around us? Artists cheated the world; they pretended to imitate, and they distorted or they exaggerated. They put a light into the sky that never was there; they filled the human face with yearning after things impossible; they put thoughts into the heart which had no business there; they made woman into a goddess, and made love – simple love – a form of worship; they exaggerated every joy; they created a heaven which could not exist. I have seen their pictures, and I know it. Why – why did we not destroy all works of Art long ago – or, at least, why did we not enclose the Gallery, with the Museum, within the College wall?
The Picture Gallery is a long room with ancient stone walls; statuary is arranged along the central line, and the pictures line the walls.
The young man led the girl into the Gallery and looked around him. Presently he stopped at a figure in white marble. It represented a woman, hands clasped, gazing upward. Anatomically, I must say, the figure is fairly correct.
"See," he said, "when in the olden times our sculptors desired to depict the Higher Life – which we have lost or thrown away for a while – they carved the marble image of a woman. Her form represented perfect beauty; her face represented perfect purity; the perfect soul must be wedded to the perfect body, otherwise there can be no perfection of Humanity. This is the Ideal Woman. Look in her face, look at the curves of her form, look at the carriage of her head; such a woman it was whom men used to love."
"But were women once like this? Could they look so? Had they such sweet and tender faces? This figure makes me ashamed."
"When men were in love, Christine, the woman that each man loved became in his mind such as this. He worshipped in his mistress the highest form of life that he could conceive. Some men were gross, their ideals were low; some were noble, then their ideals were high. Always there were among mankind some men who were continually trying to raise the ideal; always the mass of men were keeping the ideal low."
"Were the women ashamed to receive such worship? Because they must have known what they were in cold reality."
"Perhaps to the nobler sort," said the young man, "to be thought so good lifted up their hearts and kept them at that high level. But indeed I know not. Remember that when men wrote the words that you think extravagant, they were filled and wholly possessed with the image of the Perfect Woman. Nay, the nobler and stronger their nature, the more they were filled with that Vision. The deeper their love for any woman, the higher they placed her on the Altar of their worship."
"And if another man should try to take that woman from them – "
"They would kill that other man," said Jack, with a fierce gleam in his eye, which made the girl shudder. Yet she respected him for it.
"If another man should come between us now, Christine, I would – Nay, dear, forgive my rude words. What has jealousy to do with you?"
She dropped her eyes and blushed, and in all her limbs she trembled. This young man made her afraid. And yet – she knew not why – it made her happy, only to be afraid of him.
"Let us see some of the pictures," said Jack.
There were many hundreds of them. They represented I know not what; scenes of the old life in the old time. I dare say everything was there, with all the exaggerations which pleased the painters and cheated the senses of those who looked on. Fair women were painted fairer than women could ever be; their eyes were larger, softer, fuller of thought; their cheeks more tender, their limbs more comely.
There were battle scenes; the young man led the girl past them. There were scenes from history – kings laying down crowns, traitors receiving sentence, and so forth; he passed them by. There were groups of nymphs, portraits of fair women, groups of girls dancing, girls at play, girls laughing, girls bathing; he passed them by. Presently he stopped before three panels side by side, representing a simple allegory of the old time. In the first picture, two, a young man and a girl, walked hand-in-hand beside a stream. The water danced and rippled in the sunlight; behind them was an orchard full of blossom; flowers sprang up at their feet – the flowers of spring. And they walked hand-in-hand, gazing in each other's eyes. The second picture showed a man in middle-age returning home from work; beside him walked his boys; in the porch the mother sat with her daughters spinning at the wheel. The stream was now a full majestic river; the trees were loaded with fruit not yet ripe; the fields were covered with corn, green still, but waving with light and shade under the summer sky; in the distance, passing away, was a heavy thunder-cloud. In the third panel an old pair stood beside a great river, looking out upon the ocean. Again they were hand-in-hand. The sun was setting in great splendor across the sea; the reapers were carrying their harvest home with songs and dances. And the old people still gazed in each other's face, just as they had done fifty years ago.
"See, Christine!" said Jack. "In the first panel, this pair think of nothing but of each other. Presently they will have other thoughts. The stream beside which they wander is the Stream of Life. It widens as it goes. While they walk along its banks, the river grows broader and deeper. This means that as they grow older they grow wiser and learn more. So they go on continually, until they come to the mouth of the river, where it loses itself in the ocean of – what our friends tremble so much as to name. Tell me, is there terror, or doubt, or anxiety on their faces now that they have come to the end?"
"No; their faces are entirely happy."
"This you do not understand. Christine, if you were sure that in the end you would be as happy as that old woman at the end, would you be content to begin with the beginning? Would you play the part of that girl, and walk – with me – along the Stream of Life?"
He took her hand, but she made no reply, save that her eyes filled with tears. Presently she murmured,
"They are always happy – at the beginning and at the end. Did they know at the beginning that there would be an end?"
"They knew; everybody knew; the very children knew almost from infancy the great Law of Nature, that for everything there is the allotted end. They knew it."
"And yet they were always happy. I cannot understand it."
"We have destroyed that happiness," said the young man. "Love cannot exist when there is no longer end, or change, or anything to hope or fear – no mystery, nothing to hope or fear. What is a woman outside the Museum in the eyes of the College? She is only the half of humanity, subject to disease and requiring food at intervals. She no longer attracts men by the sacred mystery of her beauty. She is not even permitted any longer to make herself beautiful by her dress; nor is she allowed to create the feeling of mystery and the unknown by seclusion. She lives in the open, like the rest. We all live together; we know what each one says and thinks and does; nay, most of us have left off thinking and talking altogether."
But Christine was hardly listening; she could not understand this talk. She was looking at the pictures.
"Oh," she said, "they look so happy! There is such a beautiful contentment in their eyes! They love each other so, that they think of nothing but their love. They have forgotten the end."
"Nay, but look at the end."
"They are happy still, although the river flows into the Ocean. How can they be happy?"
"You shall learn more, Christine. You have seen enough to understand that the talk of the Physicians about the miseries of the old time is mischievous nonsense, with which they have fooled us into slavery."
"Oh, if they heard you – "
"Let them hear," he replied, sternly. "I hope, before long, we may make them hear. Christine, you can restore the old love by your own example. You alone have nothing to remember and nothing to unlearn. As for the rest of us, we have old habits to forget and prejudices to overcome before we can get back to the Past."
